


Double Dare

by CelticAurora



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alien Biology, Dubious Ethics, Galaxy Garrison, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Medical Experimentation, the Garrison does some pretty shady shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 14:26:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15487851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CelticAurora/pseuds/CelticAurora
Summary: The Galaxy Garrison has a secret that’s been kept deep inside the base for years now. It’s become a favorite hazing ritual for the newest class of senior cadets - at least once, you have to sneak into the restricted area, go through the doors, and come face-to-face with the monster that lives inside the Garrison.Takashi Shirogane doesn’t put much stock in the dare - he has a reputation as top cadet and as the Garrison’s golden boy, and the consequences of being caught in a restricted area are too perilous to risk this late in his Garrison career. But when Matt Holt drags him into the dare to save face, Shiro has no choice but to sneak into Zone 13. No one really knows exactly what’s in there - but then again, most people who have been back there don’t talk about it.Shiro goes through the doors. What he finds on the other side changes his life forever.





	Double Dare

**Author's Note:**

> I told myself I was going to focus on one or two projects. You know, like a liar. 
> 
> Inspired by [this post](http://ace-pidge.tumblr.com/post/175270900656/what-happens-if-you-change-one-single-thing-in-a) by [ace-pidge](http://ace-pidge.tumblr.com)

“Well, well, boys. Look at all this fresh meat.”

Shiro resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He’d finished his time as a junior cadet with the Galaxy Garrison, quite literally soared through flight school with top marks, and, as far as he was concerned, had made it. Years of sweat, tears, and a concerning amount of blood for a space-faring program had paid off, and now, he could take his place among the senior cadets, with a promised spot and rank of “airman” in the Garrison's astronautics program as soon as he graduated - which, for him, would be automatically upped to “airman first class,” with his participation in the Galaxy Corps Junior Officer Training program. 

But, as with every great thing in life, there always had to be some asshole to come along and ruin it.  

He hadn’t even made it through his entire first day as a senior cadet, and now, he and Matthew Holt - his oldest friend and the engineer to his pilot - had been converged upon by a group of older boys in a fashion that could only be described as “vulture-like.”

Shiro probably should have been more intimidated by them. Once upon a time, he might have been. But, after two years of barrel rolls, simulator lift-offs and touchdowns, high-altitude ejections, and a lot of skydiving - including the memorable incident when they had to practice what happened when the chutes failed to deploy and Shiro almost got impaled on a cactus - he couldn’t really find much else to be scared of. There was also the fact that he’d grown six inches in as many months, and now had a good two or three inches on most of the boys who currently surrounded them.

“Fresh meat? No, no, we’re senior cadets now,” Matt said, giving them a smile that he probably thought was suave, but really came out more as “trying too hard.”

“Still look like fresh meat to me,” one boy said. He gave off an air of superiority, and if Shiro had to guess, the boy was their de facto leader. From the shoulder stripes on his uniform and the wings pinned to his chest, he was another fighter pilot. Shiro pressed his lips together in a tired smile.

“Look, we don’t want any trouble,” he said. “We just want to finish our lunch in peace.”

“We didn’t come looking for trouble.” The boy pulled out a chair, uninvited, and sat down, folding his arms over his chest and looking down his nose at Shiro and Matt. “Unless you have some in mind.”

_ Absolutely not. _ Fighting was against Garrison rules, and even still, Shiro knew better than to risk his hard work, his reputation as the Garrison’s golden boy, just because some cocky, pain-in-the-ass sixth-year wanted to start something. As for Matt, he had his own reputation, not to mention his father’s good name, to live up to - and Shiro remembered how disastrous their hand-to-hand training had been back in first year. 

“We’re just here as a welcoming committee,” the boy continued with a saccharine smile that didn’t quite reach his green eyes. “My name’s Caden Vega. I’m sure you’ve heard of me.”

“Can’t say I have,” Matt said.

“I remember seeing your name on the leaderboards at flight academy,” Shiro remarked. “They were right under mine for top scores.”

Caden’s eyes flashed, hand tightening into a fist, but it was only for a moment. He straightened his hand out again, giving another one of those faked smiles. “Well, then, you must be the Shirogane I keep hearing about. And…” He looked to Matt as if he was something nasty that he’d stepped in. “You, I don’t know.”

“Matt Holt,” he said. “My dad - ”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s great. Now, I’m sure you two newbies don’t know, but there’s a little...initiation for new senior cadets.”

“Um...well...my dad works for the Garrison, and, um, he’s never said anything about that,” Matt said, looking to Shiro for backup. Shiro just shrugged; he was pretty sure it was less initiation and more hazing, but the fewer questions he asked, the sooner he could get back to his lunch.

“It’s a new tradition. Your old man’s probably never heard of it.” Caden leaned in. “We’re getting together a bunch of newbies tonight and going to Zone 13.”

Again, Matt and Shiro exchanged looks.

“Zone 13?” Matt asked.

“It’s top secret. Only the highest-ranking commanders get to know what’s in Zone 13.” Caden’s eyes glimmered. “But senior cadets have been going in there for years. There’s something back there. Something...weird.”

“What is it?” Shiro asked.

Caden smirked. “I dare you to come see for yourself.”

Oh no. Dares were never a sign of anything good. Shiro had played enough games of Truth or Dare, or enough rounds of Chicken with his fellow fighter pilots, to know that dares usually involved doing something stupid, questionably legal, or even both, and that was not a position he really wanted to put himself in.

“You know, I think I’m good,” Shiro said. “But thanks.”

Caden’s eyebrows climbed his forehead - and the guys gathered around him all exchanged looks of surprise, as well. He turned back to Shiro and Matt with an incredulous look.

“You are _the_ Takashi Shirogane, right? The up-and-coming fighter pilot that everyone keeps talking about?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re telling me that you’re turning down a dare?”

“Yes.”

Caden looked to his cronies. “That’s funny, none of the stories I heard said anything about Takashi Shirogane being a chicken.”

Shiro didn’t say anything. He knew that Caden was just trying to get a rise out of him, but it didn’t bother him. He didn’t need some sanctimonious little shit telling him how brave he was or wasn’t. He shrugged at Caden’s taunt.

“I’m just not interested.”

“Sounds like ‘afraid’ to me.” Caden turned his attention to Matt. “Bet you’re just as chicken as he is.”

Matt’s cheeks and ears went red, and Shiro had to admit, he felt bad for his friend. Matt didn’t have the physical presence that he had, and Shiro knew, from years of sharing a dorm with him, years of visits to the Holt family home for weekend getaways and giant Christmas parties, that Matt had been picked on before he’d been selected for the Garrison - a fate that his sister, Katie, now seemed to be suffering in his stead. It was harder for Matt to brush off Caden’s taunt.

What he didn’t expect, however, was for Matt to jump up, lean over the table, and jam a finger into Caden’s face, maybe only two inches away from poking him right in the eyeball.

“You know what?” Matt said. “I’ll be there! We’ll both be there! How do you like that?”

Caden was silent for a moment, staring at Matt with wide eyes; even his entourage had nothing to say. Then, his eyes narrowed, and he smirked at Matt.

“Sounds good to me,” he said. “We’ll head down at 2300 hours. Don’t be late.”

Caden stood, and just as quickly as they had come, him and his entourage disappeared into the busy mess hall, most likely to go torment other new senior cadets. Matt settled back down into his chair, and Shiro turned to look at him, leaning back in his chair with an incredulous look on his face.

“Really, Matt?”

Matt turned red again. “I’m sorry, I, uh...I just got caught up in the moment.”

“And you didn’t think about the fact that you just agreed to trying to break into a top-secret part of the Garrison after lights-out? Or that you’re dragging me into it?”

“Yeah, I, uh...guess I didn’t think about that.” Matt made a face. “I just wanted to shut him up. I mean...it worked, didn’t it?”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, it worked,” Shiro said, a biting edge of sarcasm in his voice. “He shut up all right. And now, he’s expecting us to meet him at Zone 13 tonight, and if we don’t, well, I’m sure he’ll just forget that he asked us to come down there and that’ll be the last of it.”

“You...don’t really think that, do you?”

“Of course I don’t, Matthew, that was sarcasm.” Shiro huffed out a sigh that sent strands of his forelock - the only part of his hair he’d allowed to grow long - dancing. 

“We can’t just not go, Shiro,” Matt said. “You know we’ll be the laughingstocks of the Garrison if we don’t.”

Shiro opened his mouth to tell Matt that, while he was aware of that, he really didn’t care enough, but then he caught the look on Matt’s face. Sure, Shiro had been subject to the occasional teasing comment about him being the Garrison’s golden boy, and there had been a good two weeks after his last growth spurt where the running joke was that he was going to get kicked out of flight school for being too big to fit in the cockpit. But that was nothing compared to what Matt had gone through, not just in the Garrison, but the years before they’d been enrolled at the Garrison. Matt wasn’t about to take another round of bullying. Not again.

Shiro sighed again. “All right. Fine. We’ll go.”

“We?” Matt blinked, surprised. “You mean...you’re going to come, too?”

Shiro nodded, looking down at his lunch tray and realizing, quite suddenly, that he no longer had an appetite. “Someone needs to make sure you don’t get into trouble.”

* * *

 

The corridors were dark. Lights-out had been announced half an hour ago, and any cadet who dared to roam the halls of the Galaxy Garrison was doing so at their own risk. While most of the senior cadets had stopped believing the rumors about what happened to students caught out after lights-out - yeah, Iverson was a hardass, but surely there was no way he’d actually once made a cadet do push-ups until he puked, while sitting on said cadet’s back - those who hadn’t yet broken the rules, or been caught breaking the rules, tended to avoid it just because of how it looked if they got caught for doing it now.

And yet, Shiro found himself and Matt sneaking down the hallway, wearing slippers instead of boots to try to soften the noise of their footsteps. Adam, their comms-spec and squad third, brought up the rear, having been roped into the situation after being accosted by Caden and his gang in the chow hall line. With the both of them deciding to go, Shiro knew he couldn’t back out now - Adam, unfortunately, had only fared marginally better in his early years than Matt, and someone needed to back up the two of them. 

“What have I signed up for? We’re going to get caught. Oh my God,” Adam muttered as they carefully eased open the door to the stairwell.

“If you stop with that, we won’t be!” Matt hissed.

“Quiet, both of you!” Shiro said, holding the door open and ushering them both into the stairwell. 

Fortunately, the patrols weren’t on the stairwells - or maybe they’d just gotten to the stairs at a good time. Whatever the case, they made it down from their dorms on L-5 to L-1 without encountering another hall patrol. L-1 was still brightly lit; this was a working level, and it was never quiet, not even in the dead of night. They slunk through, staying along the wall and sticking to lesser-used hallways to keep from being spotted, until they finally heard a bit of a commotion from down at the end of the hall they were on. 

Zone 13 was not what Shiro expected. Having seen the doors to some of the other Zones, he had expected a giant set of steel doors, accessible only by fingerprint scans - or even retinal scans, if this was as top-secret as Caden made it out to be. Instead, there was only a small steel door off the side of a forgotten hallway, with Authorized Personnel Only printed on it in blocky black letters. Caden and his cronies were gathered around the door, along with a few other first-year senior cadets - not surprisingly, Shiro recognized a lot of them from flight academy. 

“You made it.” Caden’s smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “About time.”

“This is it?” Matt said.

“It? Do you even know what’s behind these doors?” Caden asked.

“Do you?” Shiro asked.

The smile faded from Caden’s face, and his eyes narrowed. He turned away from Shiro, to address the group as a whole.

“All right, punks,” he said. “Here’s the rules. You gotta spend ten whole minutes in there. No matter what happens, or what you see. We’re gonna have the door locked.

“How are we even getting in there?” Danny, another pilot asked, raising an eyebrow at the panel next to the door. “It looks like it’s key-card access only.”

“That’s not a problem.” Caden turned to Matt. “Well, nerd?”

Shiro turned to Matt. “Matt?”

Head down, Matt reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a small ID card. As he handed it to Caden, Shiro got a good look at it, at the smiling, gray-haired, bespectacled man in the picture and the name to the left of it. His stomach sank as he read the name.

**HOLT, SAMUEL L.**

“Matt, you didn’t,” he said softly.

“Dad’s always losing his ID,” Matt said, not looking up from the floor. “He wouldn’t have noticed me taking it.”

Caden didn’t say anything, just snatched the ID out of Matt’s hand and ran it through the reader. A green light flickered, and with a heavy clunk, the door unlocked. One of Caden’s cronies opened it, and the rest surrounded the group in a semicircle, blocking off any chance of slipping away without a fuss. Caden’s eyes narrowed on Shiro, Matt, and Adam.

“Let’s start with Shirogane’s squad,” he said.

Two of the sixth-year cadets ushered the three of them forward, as the rest of the group broke out into murmurs. Shiro was pretty sure he heard one or two of the cockier pilots from flight academy making bets about how long Matt and Adam were going to last. 

“All right, all right, in you go, get in there,” Caden commanded. “Remember, losers. Ten minutes, not a second less.”

“Get a picture of whatever’s in there!” a pilot called out to the three of them as the door closed.

For a long moment, Shiro, Matt, and Adam were enveloped in darkness. Then, lights mounted to the baseboards came to life, bathing them in a dim bluish-white glow. The hallway was short, maybe only fifty feet long, and looked a little worse for wear; there were cobwebs gathering in corners, and Shiro saw something scuttling for cover that he really hoped wasn’t a cockroach. Or a scorpion. 

“I kind of expected it to be cleaner,” Matt said. 

“Maybe no one’s been back here in a while.” Shiro shrugged. The hallway was lined with lockers, and he reached out, giving an experimental tug on one of the door handles. The locker opened, and it was empty save for some crumpled paper at the bottom. “See, nothing in here.”

“This one’s locked, though,” Matt said, rattling another locker door. “And the lock seems pretty new.”

“What do you think is back here?” Adam asked, voice shaking slightly.

“Honestly, I’m not even sure there really is anything back here,” Shiro said, taking a look around. 

“The hallway goes on,” Matt said, pointing. At the end of the hall, Shiro could see the left-hand turn, leading on to another hall. “Let’s take a look.”

Shiro led the way, feeling Matt and Adam hovering exceptionally close. He couldn’t say that he blamed them; there was something about this place that left an unsettled feeling in his gut that had nothing to do with the questionable food of the Garrison chow hall. 

They rounded the corner. The hallway beyond was longer, lined with doors instead of lockers, each one set about a hundred feet apart, evens on the right and odds on the left. Shiro reached over to door number one and gave the handle an experimental shake.

“It’s locked,” he said.

“This one is, too,” Matt said, jiggling the handle to the second door.

They picked their way down the hall, trying doors, all of them locked. Shiro reached for another door, the number eleven picked out in the opaque glass window with peeling black paint, and jimmied the handle. Instead of resisting, however, the door clicked, then gave way. Shiro’s grip on the handle tightened ever so slightly.

“Guys,” he said, “this one’s unlocked.”

“O...okay,” Matt said, although his tone implied that this fact was anything but. “Um...I guess we’re going in there.”

Shiro pushed the door opened and led the way in. His shoulder caught on something heavy and metal as he did, and he grunted, clutching at it. Matt and Adam both jumped back, Adam making a noise like a squeaky toy being stepped on and Matt saying something that probably would have gotten him latrine duty if one of the commanders had overheard him saying it.

“It’s okay,” Shiro said after a moment, rubbing his aching shoulder. “It’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s not sentient.”

The lights from the hallway had not followed them in here, and a cursory running of his hand over the wall hadn’t revealed a light switch, only the hard metal edge of whatever he had caught with his shoulder.

“Hang on, I have...something…” He heard Matt fumbling around in the pockets of his cargo pants, and then, a small light came to life. Matt was holding the tiniest flashlight Shiro had ever seen, which he swept over the room.

They were in a room, maybe only ten by ten at the most, its farthest wall made up almost entirely of thick glass. A counter had been pushed against the glass, with a few swivel chairs haphazardly positioned at the counter. There was some sort of panel built into the counter, and a microphone jutted up from the panel. The two side walls of the room were wall-to-wall counters, covered in screens, keyboards, and what looked like an entire chemistry set. The heavy metal thing that Shiro had walked into turned out to be a file cabinet; Matt tried the drawers, but they were locked.

“Hmm,” Shiro said, running a hand over the file cabinet. The top was slightly dusty, but the rest of it was in fairly good shape. “I didn’t think the Garrison even kept paper files anymore.”

“They keep some paper backups,” Matt said, frowning at the file cabinet, “just in case of a massive computer failure. But even still, the paper copies are kind of last resorts.”

“What do you think’s in this cabinet?”

Matt shrugged. “I have no idea. Could be anything.”

“Um...guys?” Adam’s voice rose to a panicked squeak at the end. “Guys, I...I think something moved in there.”

Matt and Shiro turned around. Adam was staring at the massive window, beyond which was only darkness. Shiro took a few steps closer, squinting. He couldn’t see anything beyond the window.

“Did you see something move?” Matt asked, following closely behind Shiro.

“Y-Yeah,” Adam stammered. “Something big.”

“There’s got to be a way to turn on the lights in that room,” Shiro said, approaching the small control panel. “Matt, bring the flashlight over here.”

“Yeah, coming.” Matt came over, shining the light on the small panel. Shiro frowned at it; it was a smooth, silver array of buttons and small lights, but the entire board was dark, and Shiro didn’t have the faintest clue which buttons did what, or if the entire thing even worked.

“Do you think we have to power it on?” Shiro asked.

“I’m not even sure where we would look to power it on,” Matt said. “Try pressing a button.”

“I don’t know what any of these do,” Shiro said. “And I’d really rather not mess something up, especially if it’s something that can be traced back to the three of us.”

“Let me try something.” Matt leaned over, reaching across Shiro to prod at a button. Nothing happened. He tapped the microphone, then pressed the button at the base of it. “Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?”

“It looks like the entire board is off,” Shiro said.

“Hmmm.” Matt turned, sweeping his flashlight beam around the room. “Maybe one of these other panels starts that panel?”

“Or there might be another room that controls the power to this room,” Shiro suggested with a shrug. “Maybe they cut the main power at night to save energy.”

“That’s the kind of shit my nana does to keep her power bill from going too high,” Matt remarked, continuing to make a sweep of the room. “Not something I would expect a government paramilitary organization to have to do…”

He turned back around, flashlight bouncing off the glass panel in front of the three of them, casting their reflections into sharp, pale relief. Shiro felt a hand on his wrist, and glancing over, he found Adam tightly clutching him, eyes huge in his pale face.

“Guys…”

Shiro looked forward again...and what he saw made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

A pair of glowing yellow eyes loomed out of the darkness in the room beyond the window. They were maybe five feet or so from the glass, but what really made Shiro’s heart miss a beat was the fact that the eyes appeared to be floating a good five feet off the ground. 

“Oh my God…” Matt murmured.

“Guys, I think it’s seen us,” Adam said, and Shiro was pretty sure Adam’s grip on his wrist was the only reason he was still standing.

“Just...stay calm,” Shiro muttered. “Stay calm, and don’t move. Maybe it can’t see us if we don’t move…”

“Dude, what the fuck is that?” Matt asked. 

“How am I supposed to know?” Shiro asked.

“Shiro…” Adam whined.

And then, as quickly as they’d appeared, the eyes had vanished. Adam, Matt, and Shiro stood, stunned; Shiro could feel his heart thumping double-time in his chest, and he had the terrible feeling like they were still being watched.

“Where did it go?” Adam’s voice rose to a panicky note. “Where did it go?”

“What was that?” Matt asked. “Shiro, what was that? What do they have back here?”

“Guys, shhh,” Shiro said, reaching over and lowering Matt’s flashlight from the glass. He didn’t dare turn it off - he was pretty sure that even his courage would fail if the flashlight got turned off - but he moved it so that it was no longer reflecting off the glass. “I think it’s time we got out of here…”

“Shiro, dude, there is something back there and I am freaking out,” Matt said, grabbing hold of Shiro’s other wrist. 

“I know.” Shiro wanted to give Matt a logical explanation - wanted to tell him that it was just some desert animal that ended up trapped in the Garrison somehow, or was even picked up for use of experimentation. It was a pretty shady-sounding thing, but it was better than the alternative, because the alternative...Shiro didn’t want to consider the alternative. 

But he couldn’t make his mouth say the words.

"All right, let’s go ahead and get out of here. I think our ten minutes are just about - ”

The glass in front of them visibly shuddered from the impact of something hitting it. 

Adam’s resulting shriek could have woken the entire garrison; he sprinted out of the room. Matt swore loudly, jolting backwards hard enough that he tripped over his own feet and fell. The flashlight skittered out of his hands; he ignored it, scrambling to his feet.

“Fuck this shit!” he yelped, running out of the room. 

Shiro was on his heels, about to run out of the room, when he realized Matt’s flashlight could be incriminating - and the last thing he needed was for anyone to know that they had been back there. Heart in his throat, he darted back into the room to grab the flashlight. The flashlight had ended up only a foot from the window. He crept close, paused, scanning the window with bated breath. He’d heard something strike it, and hard, too, but he couldn’t see anything on the glass. Carefully, he leaned down and grabbed the flashlight.

_ BAM! _

He looked up, swinging the flashlight’s beam up with him, finding that a hand had slammed into the window, and the glowing eyes were pressed against the window.

That was the last straw for Shiro. He bolted from the room, following the sound of Matt and Adam banging at the door to Zone 13, begging to be let out. He didn’t stop running until he had rounded the corner and made it down the last fifty feet. Just as he skidded to a halt behind Matt and Adam, he heard Caden speaking from the outside.

“All right, open the door!”

The door slid open, and Matt and Adam bolted out, both pale and wide-eyed. A few cadets that had been standing, waiting eagerly backed off slightly, now looking far less sure of themselves. Shiro sagged against the wall, rubbing his chest at the base of his throat, trying to still the rapid beating of his heart, feeling the adrenaline in his system ebbing, leaving his knees shaking. As he worked to catch his breath and calm his jitters, he recalled one detail he hadn’t properly processed in his immediate mad dash to get out of the room before whatever was in there came through the glass.

It had been a hand hitting the glass.

And the hand ended in five razor-sharp claws.

* * *

 

Sleep did not come easy to Shiro that night.

Satisfied that they had spent ten minutes back there, Caden had shooed Matt, Adam, and Shiro off after the next group had gone in. Adam hadn’t stopped shaking the entire way back to his dorm, and Shiro couldn’t say he blamed him. 

He and Matt didn’t speak a word as they climbed into their beds and shut the lights off. They laid there in the dark for a long moment, and then Matt had finally spoken.

“Shiro?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.” 

“What for?”

“I shouldn’t have dragged us back there. Whatever’s back there was best left alone.”

Shiro hadn’t said anything in response. Matt had, eventually, rolled over, his back to Shiro, and as Shiro watched in the dimness, he’d eventually dozed off; he could tell by the slow, steady rise and fall of Matt’s back. He wished sleep could have come as easily to him, but he was far too worked up from whatever he’d seen down in Zone 13.

What was it that the Garrison was hiding down there? Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been human - the claws, the glowing eyes looming out of the darkness, none of that was human. But the fact that troubled Shiro the most was the fact that whatever it was, it stood like a human. It thought like a human. Those claws in the glass...those were meant to be a threat. A warning. A get out of my space. 

But if it wasn’t strictly human, and it wasn’t strictly an animal, then what exactly was it?

_ Could it be...an alien? _

The very thought was laughable. There was, to date, no knowledge or record of any living species outside of Earth. To the best that every Garrison cadet knew, they were, in fact, alone in the universe.

But the universe was a vast space, and Earth only occupied one small corner of it. Who was Shiro to say that they were the only life in the universe? Who even was the Garrison to make such a claim? They’d barely been to the edge of their solar system; plans were being made to send manned missions to Kerberos, one of Pluto’s moons, within the next few years. That, however, didn’t solve the matter about what might have been beyond the solar system, nor did it do anything to explain what it was the Garrison was keeping down in Zone 13.

When Shiro finally fell into a restless doze, he dreamed of claws and yellow eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> A brief guide to the ranking/naming system of the classes of cadets, by yours truly (I had to come up with something, because there was nothing and it was driving me crazy):
> 
> Novice cadets - Students in their first two years at the Galaxy Garrison are known as novice cadets. These students are generally 14-16 years old. Classes for novices are generalized, and include instruction in such areas as chemistry, physics, astronomy, and geology, as well as various physical education courses, such as strength training, hand-to-hand combat, and marksmanship. While enrolled as novice cadets, students may begin to track into certain career fields, such as pilots (fighter and cargo), engineers, and even scientists. At the end of their second novice year, students take entrance examinations to track into different specialties for their junior cadet years.
> 
> Junior cadets - Students in years three and four at the Galaxy Garrison are known as junior cadets. These students are generally 16-18 years old. Classes for juniors still include some generalized courses, but are more structured towards a student’s chosen career path. Perhaps the most rigorous and well-known of these “schools” is the Garrison’s Flight Academy. Spots in the Flight Academy are limited, and the academy is notoriously competitive. Chief among the pilots are those selected for Fighter Class. Only students with the top scores on their entrance exams are considered for Fighter Class, and prepare for their senior cadet years with a curriculum that is both physically and emotionally intense.
> 
> Senior cadets - Students in years five and six at the Galaxy Garrison are known as senior cadets. These students are generally 18-20 years old. During this time, students who were separated into differing academies during their junior cadet years are now brought together as three-person teams: One pilot, one engineer, one communications specialist (comm-spec). Senior cadets may also choose to enroll in the Garrison’s JOT (Junior Officer Training) program, where, upon both completion of the program and graduation from the Galaxy Garrison, eligible cadets are automatically promoted to the rank of private/airman first class upon enlistment in the Garrison's astronautics program. 
> 
>  
> 
> [Catch me on Tumblr](http://mllecomtessedelafere.tumblr.com)


End file.
